


Ardour

by C31PO (SirenAlpha)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 05:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirenAlpha/pseuds/C31PO
Summary: Sidney knows he has to deal with the arduous task of cheering up Claude when he has every right to be angry that Team Canada didn't let him play.





	Ardour

**Author's Note:**

> I've both been in a funk recently and working on original content. So I wrote this real quick to deal with some of my shit. Hopefully you can get something out of it, too.

Sid steps out onto the balcony, breathing in the fresher, cooler air. He closes the door behind himself because he’s polite, but also because Claude is already out here. Their words don’t need to float by any others’ ears. Sid turns to him to see him looking out over the view. He’s angry. Sid knows it because he knows how angry he would be in his place, but he sits comfortably in his anger. God, why can’t Sid be that comfortable? Sid is nothing but ugly in his anger, and even during his rare moments at rest he feels uncomfortable, watched, like God or some crazy fan is there right over his shoulder waiting to judge him.

“We could have been great, you know,” Claude says, and it almost passes for conversational.

“We won.”

Claude scoffs. “You and Team Canada won against a team with no country, no past, and no future to play for.  _ We  _ could have been great.”

“I know,” he says with a heavy sigh and sits down beside Claude. He feels so frustrated at Team Canada’s management, too, but he got to play.

“I don’t know why I thought this time would be different. I won in 2015. I got picked outright for this, not some runner up because someone else got hurt. Then I don‘t even play,” he says, wringing his hands out uselessly. “Almost makes me wish I hadn’t quit tobacco.”

“Really?” he asks. He’d tried it in an attempt to fit in. Unlike a lot of people he knew, he’d dropped it immediately. 

Claude smiles slyly. “Too gross for you, eh? I know. I still kinda think cigarettes are sexy.”

“And screw up your lungs in addition to getting cancer.”

“Yes, I know. Danny put the fear of cancer in me and helped me to quit.”

It takes Sid a second to place the name to Daniel Briere. He hadn’t known Claude when they had lived together. “I’m glad he could help you.”

“Thanks,” he says with a grin that turns sharp. “If people really worried about our health they’d tell us to stop playing hockey”

Sid stares at him. “What do you mean? We’re athletes.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

He does. He means the concussions, the broken bones, the things you don’t heal right from and the vicious hits you regret throwing but won’t say. “And do what instead?”

“Fucking real jobs like normal people where you don’t get punched in the face,” he says, throwing his arms out. “Don’t you ever think about how our lifestyles get paid for by people working real jobs just wanting us to punch each other?”

“They don’t watch to see us get punched. They watch to see us play hockey,” he retorts, but without much heat. He’s felt that guilt slide down the back of his throat. It happens most often when he isn’t playing and sitting sick in a house he’s still not sure he really earned. “We don’t make them spend their money on us.”

“Oh, no, of course not. We let the marketers do that for us.”

“Marketers sell worse things than an evening watching us play,” he says, rolling his eyes. He’s had plenty of shit sold to him that’s more expensive than a ticket to watch him play. “What would we even do instead?”

Claude sighs, leaning back in his seat. “Growing up, becoming an electrician was always the looming future if I could not make it as a hockey player. Not the worst way to live. I could have still worked with my hands.”

“Not gone to university? I would have. I don’t know what I would have done after, but.”

“Like you ever had to worry about that,” he says, but this he doesn’t sound angry about it. “Now, I don’t think I’m dumb, but I’m not meant for school. I don’t have to worry about that anymore at least.”

“Because of the money we stole through marketers from people with real jobs,” Sid says in an overly serious tone. 

Claude drops his head, doing his best to hide a small smile and realizing how dumb it sounds. “You must think about it sometimes though.”

“Think of what?”

“How meaningless this all is. How utterly useless our lives are,” he says, suddenly exploding with passion. He looks right into Sid’s eyes with a bright fierceness. “We don’t  _ do _ anything.”

“So what if it’s a sport or a game? What’s so wrong about being able to live your life doing what you love?” he counters, facing Claude fully. “We get to be happy playing and we make our fans happy when we play. How is that meaningless?”

“But we’re not happy,” he says shaking his head. “We have pain and drugs and addictions and injuries that don’t go away. We’re supposed to love it more than anything, give up all our time and our bodies to win, for the fans. We’re supposed to leave it all out on the ice, but our bodies come home with us. What good is millions of dollars when your head isn’t any good or your knees or your hands?”

Sid struggles to find any words. “You’re only saying that because you just went through an injury and because you didn’t get to play. You’re angry.”

Claude stares back still resolved. “But you’re not saying I’m wrong. We’re highly skilled at something that would be totally useless if someone didn’t want to pay to see us use them. Just think of the women’s leagues. Shit, none of us players are even the ones really getting paid for all the attention. But we’re the ones who get fucked up for it.”

“Then why don’t you just leave?” Sid asks harshly because he’s asked himself the same things. Every time he gets hurt he asks why he doesn’t stop. Why doesn’t he stop? Why does he just let himself get hurt again? Why does no one stop him, protect him?

Claude laughs, leaning back. “We have contracts. I do still like hockey despite it all. I don’t know anything else. What would I do without it?”

“Nothing, anything,” he says with a shrug. “You have the money to do what you want.”

“Money doesn’t give me everything I want,” he says quietly, his anger gone. He runs the back of his hand over Sid’s arm soothingly. Sid sighs again almost crumpling in on himself underneath the hopelessness that is them. He catches Claude’s hand, tangling their fingers, because that’s all the comfort he can offer him.

“It’s not hockey causing this.”

“No, but it gave the opportunity, makes it all worse.”

“I know.”

Claude slowly leans forward and rests his forehead on Sid’s shoulder. Neither of them are drunk enough to really get away with this even if the rest of the team is. Sid tells himself he doesn’t care. He’s too awkward to smoothly cover for them, but he can trust Claude to.

Sid clears his throat. “Is it too sappy if I say you make it hurt less?”

Claude doesn’t respond for a few moments. Then he sits up. “No, but I’d call you a liar. I make it hurt more.”

He makes Sid ache in all the ways hockey can’t make him. Sid knew homesickness once, the desire for love and comfort and what once was. His yearning for Claude is for things that aren’t and can never be. He can imagine all the moments that could be, all the memories of together they could have, but they have no power to make them real.

Something in the night, or maybe in the booze, makes Sid brave. He leans forward and kisses Claude, softly and quickly. Claude makes a small noise of happy satisfaction that nearly tempts Sid into leaning in again.

“Thought this would be too public for you,” Claude murmurs. 

“Well, we both have problems with what we can’t have.”

“So we stay where we are, stuck.”

“No, not stuck,” Sid shaking his head. He looks right into Claude because he needs him to understand this. “Things change. We’ve changed, haven’t we? Maybe hockey will change for the better, and even if it doesn’t, we have after, don’t we?”

“Or maybe one day we don’t want each other so badly.”

Sid laughs this time. Maybe someone else would take that as doubting their relationship or saying that their feelings were already weakening, but they wouldn’t be Claude. Sid’s already tried that, waiting for it to not hurt. He knows Claude well enough to know he must have done the same. Sid would rather wait for a time to be together than for time and distance to break them apart. “The day that happens is the day we stop living.”

Claude lets out a breath like he wants to argue, but doesn’t have any arguments left. “I was out here to be angry.”

“I know,” he says, smiling. “I came out here to make you happy and come drink with me.”

“Really?” he asks, starting to smile, too.

“You deserve to be angry, I know, but I deserve to be happy with you for at least a night. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he says, leaning in and kissing Sid. “I want to be happy with you, too.”

“Then why do you have to be such a pain in the ass to cheer up?”

He gets out of his seat and pulls Claude up with him.

“Oh like you’re always such a ray of sunshine and easy to pick up.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get all existential about it,” he says, heading back to the balcony door, still keeping Claude close to him. 

“No, you’re just doom and gloom and curses from the hockey gods.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says, opening the door. “Get in there and have some champagne.”

Claude steps in, grinning at him as he passes. Sid can see he’s dying to say some supremely suggestive quip. He won’t say anything in the open only for Sid’s sake. He says instead, “Yes, Captain.”

Sid hates that knowing look he gets. 

**Author's Note:**

> There is a definitely smokeless tobacco problem in hockey, but could not confirm whether Sidney or Claude participate. I saw claims for Sid, but no proof.   
> Claude's father appears to be an electrician and have his own company (or at least used to) which is where I'm getting the electrician thing from.   
> I imagine most pro-athletes are kinesthetic learners so they're not exactly suited for traditional academia.   
> I think that's everything I wanted to mention. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
